PASSAGE: “And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation.”
Q: Does this mean that God needs rest?
SURROUNDING TEXT: The statements immediately around this passage point to a definition of rest associated with finishing work on a task rather than needing to recuperate from the expenditure of energy. Genesis 1:31 says that God saw everything He “had made” in the past tense, not current and ongoing.
All of it was “very good” reflecting His perfection in all He does. The next verse, Genesis 2:1, reiterates the completion of creation, saying the heavens, earth, and all their host “were finished.”
Then, immediately following the passage about God’s rest, Genesis 2:4 gives a structural break between the account just given and the complementary account that is about to follow, again with a past tense about the heavens and the earth, when they “were created.”
---God rested from a particular task once He completed it because there was nothing more to do on that project.
---He ceased from his creative work of making new things, while still continuing to sustain what He had made.
SAME BOOK: The two accounts of creation, the one preceding Genesis 2:4 and the one following, are sometimes misrepresented as contradictory rather than complementary.
---This seems to be done in an effort to cast the creation accounts as something other than actual history, suggesting instead a symbolic gesture or literary technique that offers abstract ideas about spirituality.
---These fail on close analysis, however, because the details offered in both accounts reveal their complementary nature.
Defining Day
Genesis 2:4 uses the Hebrew term for day in a manner different from its use for the six days of creation in Genesis 1. This particular word is a case where context guides translation.
Genesis 2:4 uses the Hebrew term for day in a manner different from its use for the six days of creation in Genesis 1. This particular word is a case where context guides translation.
In Genesis 2:4, the word could also be translated as “at the time that” or “when.”
*Here the word is singular, not plural, and it lacks other descriptive information like “second day” or “evening and morning,” so it is understood in a general time frame sense.
In Genesis 1, however, the word is attached to sequential numbers and is characterized as passing through the stages of evening and morning, designating these as literal days.
SAME WRITER: Moses wrote the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
SAME WRITER: Moses wrote the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
These five together are called the Law or the Law of Moses. In Exodus 20:8–11, God gave the Ten Commandments .... He instructed to rest from work every seventh day and gave the example of what he did at creation, saying “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.”
These are six literal days for creation since the word appears in plural form as days and is modified by a number, six.
This is restated again in Exodus 31:12–17.
When God gave the Ten Commandments a second time in Deuteronomy 5:15, He changed the reference to His power to another mighty act, saying, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”
SAME TESTAMENT: Psalm 95 also combines a remembrance of God’s power in creation with His power to rescue and bring people to a place of rest.
SAME TESTAMENT: Psalm 95 also combines a remembrance of God’s power in creation with His power to rescue and bring people to a place of rest.
First, the psalmist says, “The sea is His, for he made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!”
Then the psalmist adds that those God delivered from Egypt who chose to harden their hearts against him were not permitted to enter the rest he provided Abraham’s descendants in the promised land. The last two verses say, “For forty years I loathed that generation and said, ‘They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.’ Therefore I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’”
ENTIRE BIBLE: God develops His example of rest even further in the New Testament.
ENTIRE BIBLE: God develops His example of rest even further in the New Testament.
In John 5, Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, the day of rest. But in regard to this, Jesus said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” God did not rest from all work after six days of making the natural world; He only ceased from His creating work, while continuing in other work. God does not need rest, but He demonstrates and offers it to those who need it.
In Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, “Come to Me . . . and I will give you rest.”
Hebrews 3 and 4 draw parallels between the rest God offered His people by bringing them out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land and the rest God extends to anyone who comes to Him through Jesus.
Hebrews 3 and 4 draw parallels between the rest God offered His people by bringing them out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land and the rest God extends to anyone who comes to Him through Jesus.
The writer warns against having an evil, unbelieving heart like those who missed the opportunity to enter the promised land and cautions against being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
In chapter 4, the writer reaches back further in history to God’s setting the example of rest after completing His creation of the natural world, saying, “His works were finished from the foundation of the world. . . . And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.” This phrasing requires literal days in order for creation to have been complete just after the founding of the world. Then the writer attributes Psalm 95 to David and notices that although the psalm speaks about the Israelites’ time in the wilderness before entering the promised land, it also pictures another type of rest God offers now. David lived about 400 years after Moses and Joshua, and yet the psalm says, “Today, if you hear [God’s] voice, do not harden your hearts.”
Q: Want Rest?
The One who finished the work of creating the natural world, who still upholds the universe by His power, has now finished the work of making purification for sins, and by this completed work, those who place their faith in Him may enter into His rest.
So going back to the original passage and question:
Q: Want Rest?
The One who finished the work of creating the natural world, who still upholds the universe by His power, has now finished the work of making purification for sins, and by this completed work, those who place their faith in Him may enter into His rest.
So going back to the original passage and question:
Q: Does this mean that God needs rest?
A: No.
God does not need rest, but He shows us how He alone is able to bring a wondrous work to completion, whether creation or redemption, and invites us to come to Him for rest."
AIG
